Sort Plants into Groups

You know quite a lot about the classification of living things, but you're here because you want to extend your understanding of why plants are grouped the way they are.

Basically, the Plant Kingdom is divided into flowering plants and non-flowering plants.

You will be familiar with both groups, but this activity will help you decide on what is a flowering plant, what is not, and why they are grouped the way they are.

Flowering plants, as their name suggests, reproduce by producing flowers. Of course, even if they're not flowering at the moment you're looking at them, they are still flowering plants! Some of them don't look especially 'flowery' since they use the wind to pollinate them, but even though they aren't brightly coloured, they still use flowers to reproduce themselves. All these are flowering plants:

Poppy	Chrysanthemum	Grass	Cactus	Apple Tree

On the other hand, non-flowering plants reproduce without the use of flowers. They reproduce by releasing little 'seed'-like spores which float on the wind to land in a new place where they can grow. Although they're not as obvious, you will have seen lots of different non-flowering plants, like these:

Conifer	Moss	Fern	Horsetail

OK, well let's get stuck into this activity and see if we can help you to understand the classification of plants a little better.